{"id":607796,"date":"2026-04-26T17:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/607796\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T17:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:19:07","slug":"final-fantasy-14-localizer-draws-criticism-for-ai-art-at-fan-fest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/607796\/","title":{"rendered":"Final Fantasy 14 Localizer Draws Criticism For AI Art At Fan Fest"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day two of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival 2026 kicked off in Anaheim, California, yesterday, following the announcement on April 24 that a new expansion for the MMORPG, titled Evercold, will be dropping in January 2027<\/a>. While reactions to the upcoming expansion have been positive, the inclusion of AI-generated art during a panel by Square Enix localizer Christopher Koji Fox struck a discordant note that bummed some fans out.<\/p>\n

The panel in question, titled \u201cFrom Tacos to Tenders: Serving up the Lyrics of FFXIV,\u201d has drawn fans\u2019 ire due to Koji Fox\u2019s frequent use of AI-generated images and videos throughout the presentation. I will warn you that the livestreamed segment<\/a> in question is two hours long, and it\u2019s a bit of a tough watch, as, once Fox starts rolling out the AI-generated slop, the crowd\u2019s lack of enthusiasm is immediately apparent. The crowd, which was mostly laughing, went really quiet.<\/p>\n

There are at least two examples (including one that was shown twice) of AI tomfoolery I could spot, including one where Fox used \u201cCopilot-kun\u201d to generate a music video<\/a>, and another in which he displayed an AI-generated image<\/a> of the music artists who worked on Final Fantasy XIV\u2019s soundtrack.<\/p>\n

Now, to be fair to Koji Fox, he was very upfront about his decision to incorporate AI-generated slop into his presentation. \u201cDue to time constraints, I wasn\u2019t able to get permission to use official photos,\u201d Fox stated during the panel. \u201cAnd, because our CEO has been keen on incorporating AI tools into our daily work, I decided to create an AI approximation of the famous artist that we\u2019ve worked with on The Primals\u2026 and I did this to much success. And by much success, I mean no success.\u201d<\/p>\n

That hasn\u2019t stopped some fans online from dragging him for his decision, though. \u201cKoji Fox speedruns the death of his good standing with the community,\u201d commented one user<\/a> on Bluesky. \u201cHe spent at least six months of goodwill by showing us that he used AI at work at least once,\u201d replied another<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That being said, I\u2019m fairly certain that Fox\u2019s decision to use AI in the presentation, paired with his comment about Square Enix \u201cincorporating AI tools into our daily work,\u201d is supposed to be a not-so-subtle jab at the company\u2019s president, Takashi Kiryu. Kiryu has made his stance on AI very clear on several occasions in the past, including the time in 2023 when he stated that Square Enix planned to be \u201caggressive\u201d in their utilization of AI tech<\/a> moving forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe also intend to be aggressive in applying AI and other cutting-edge technologies to both our content development and our publishing functions,\u201d Kiryu stated in a letter on New Year\u2019s Day. \u201cIn the short term, our goal will be to enhance our development productivity and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the longer term, we hope to leverage those technologies to create new forms of content for consumers, as we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe I\u2019m just being overly charitable here, but I can\u2019t help but feel like Koji Fox knew that his use of AI-generated videos and images during the panel would be controversial. The whole thing comes off as sort of a protest to me, but perhaps I\u2019m overthinking it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Day two of the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival 2026 kicked off in Anaheim, California, yesterday, following the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":607797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[182,29755,73382,11045,74],"class_list":{"0":"post-607796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-final-fantasy","10":"tag-final-fantasy-xiv","11":"tag-square-enix","12":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=607796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/607796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/607797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=607796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=607796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=607796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}